


tree

by saturno



Category: Outlast (Video Games)
Genre: Disgusting Descriptions, Lowercase, M/M, Mental Instability, dying
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-06-22
Updated: 2015-06-22
Packaged: 2018-04-05 16:06:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,017
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4186176
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saturno/pseuds/saturno
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"i been dreaming about this for ever. doctor."</p>
            </blockquote>





	tree

**Author's Note:**

> title is [an aphex twin track.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKyD6n2DHPU) work in progress, something i've had in mind for a long time.

"where you goin?"  


it's a long, dark, plastic-lined hallway in the bowels underneath the solid rock of the mountain. here, down in their ant tunnel caverns, the men around them die, their last slow soft wrigglings enshrouded in the pitch blackness, illuminated for a few moments when the red strobing emergency light flashes over them. their entire bodies lit up in red, as though the blood pulsing out from their insides has dyed their skins and uniforms and the whites of their eyes all one color.  
the shivery laughing man in front of him is wet with blood up to his elbows and splashed with it across the front of his brown patient uniform, up in an arc across his chest, his throat, the unmarred side of his scar tissued face. he can clearly imagine the severed artery responsible for the mess, what it must've looked like when it was first ripped open in between Giggles' glittering wet teeth. Giggles' mouth is caked and dripping, long slow tendril strands of the doctor's blood and freeflowing saliva down his chin, and it makes the wet of all the cracked teeth in his mouth stand out more in the flashing light.

"where you off to," he says again, scraping a long piece of pried-up metal along the floor as he takes little slow baby steps towards Giggles and the man dying on the floor. steps over him, and the man moves his arms sluggishly and makes a deep-down drowned noise like he doesn't have the strength left in him to cry. Giggles feints like he's stepping backwards, away from him, like he's going to lunge towards the opposite end of the hallway for escape at any moment, but it's only a game he's playing. a game that his incessant laughing and his itching wriggling fingers all give away. he isn't going anywhere. this is playtime. he's a dog that wants to be caught.

"cmere," the thing in his hand is a ripped-off piece of fuck knows what from the ceiling, and its rough edges bite into his palm every time he scrapes it over something hard in the floor while he walks. but he doesn't notice, not really. "cmere, cmere baby. cmere. you don't got anywhere to be but here. right? right here."  
Giggles is taking another step back and mutating for a moment, shifting and changing into some mirror-imaged creature that skitters in and out of view with the pulsing darkness. the sands, he's heard people around him say. sand gods. but it's beyond his concern right now. he knows Giggles is there, behind the vision, back there in the dark. pacing backwards, thumb in his mouth, sucking at a thumbnail cracked to the quick, smiling around it.

"you're a pretty girl aren't you."  
" _hmhmhmhmhm,_ " of his closed-mouth laughing, nasal and crackling with post-nasal drip fluid, full of nervous excited energy.  
"ohhh you _are,_ you pretty little thing," and he can feel his own dry tongue scraping against the inside of his mouth, sliding over the inside of his bottom lip, "little fucking- sweet little girl, you're-"

"FUCKER," echoing suddenly from the miles and miles of hallway behind him, someone shouting from beyond a bend and he knows the shout is for him but he ignores it. Giggles has backed up enough that the red emergency light in the ceiling is shining right over him, and the tensing of his body and the look on his face plead, _more, more._  
"wanna open up for me, right? want me to open you up? get myself in?" he's walking faster, closing the gap between them and raising the shard of dirty metal in front of him, reaching out, pushing the flat of it against Giggles' side, "want this in you? this right here?"  
"m _m_ hm, _mmhhmhmhmhm-_ "  
"you'd like that right? me in there? open you real wide cunt. spill you everywhere, would you like that?-"

" _FUCKER,_ " booming what feels like right in his ear, and there's a fist grabbing into the back of his shirt, jerking, yanking him back so hard he's stumbling and nearly off his feet, "FUCKER, F- _FF-_ "  
"are you kidding? _are you kidding?_ what the fuck are you doing," comes a second voice and a second hand shoving into him, slamming into his shoulder and turning him off balance enough that when the hand comes again and yanks the metal piece out of his grip, he isn't able to react quick enough. the guy is pitching it behind him, and he can hear it bouncing off the floor once, twice, clunking into the dying doctor and stopping there."we've got a job to do," says the guy who yanked the weapon away from him, smartass, self proclaimed bossman bossy ass motherfucker know-it-all piece of shit _Smartass,_ "you're fucking- you're over here trying to thin our ranks??"

"wasn't gonna- hurt him-" he's grunting, indignant and half hard and his hand throbbing where the razor edge of the metal bit in and slit thin on the way out. Giggles is standing there uselessly, laughing and chewing the next dirty finger in line and eyeing him up and down from under heavy lids. it isn't clear how much is going on underneath. it doesn't matter how much is going on underneath.

Smartass yells in his ear for a while, all anger and self righteousness, they have a job he says, they have a commitment to the process of psychiatric purging and _now's_ the time and _you're_ not taking this seriously, and it's impossible to tune him out when he's this close. 'Fucker' is wide-open mouth breathing down the back of his neck while Smartass reads him the riot act. Fucker, Smartass' muscle. no shirt and no shoes and deep gouges on the bottom of his feet as a result, bleeds everywhere he walks. no thoughts in his head either, and he can hear the small _fuhhhkkr_ on his exhales, like he's chanting and praying under his breath to the Fucker god, the god of thoughtless muscle-dense idiots like him.  
he bodies his way through the two of them and steps backwards, giving himself some space, some breathing room before he loses control and turns and bites someone. Smartass wants him to play along in his revenge scheme. that's what this is for him, a revenge scheme, a chance to get even. eye for an eye. an opportunity to get all his owed eyes.  
Smartass is missing the opportunities that exist for fun. he's missing them and he's taking everybody else he can get down with him. if he can't have fun, no one has fun. this is _serious._ this is _business._ on and on. always talking like he's giving a fucking speech, like he's at a podium in front of hundreds, jerking off over his own holier-than-thou justice spiels.

"don't fuck this up, idiot," spits Smartass with a look on his face like murder, physically spits with a big spray of sour saliva misting out in front of him and one big glob of it hitting the floor audibly. big shoulder-heaving breaths like his anger's exhausted him. like "Idiot" has exhausted him. "Idiot" hopes that he exhausts him real good. Fucker's not always going to be around to watch Smartass' back for him. he hopes Smartass is so tired soon that he doesn't pay careful attention and doesn't see "Idiot" coming up from behind, to cut him across the belly and knife his bowels open. show him how full of shit he really is. make him die slow for all the time of his that he's wasted. time that "Idiot" could've spent doing better things, and here he glances out of the corner of his eye, looking right at the better thing he could've been doing. (Giggles.) up and down, drinking in what he can see in the low light. Giggles had lost his pants at some point, and his right leg is a red angry mottled thing, meat twisted up in cancers and lesions. red and purple and black over the bone and three of his toes missing. he wonders how Giggles can walk like that. he wonders if Giggles even feels pain. he wonders if Giggles will like it when he opens him up. if he'll still smile like he's over there doing now, tittering and batting his nonexistent eyelashes at him. skinny little shit with one hand in his mouth and the other hand not so subtly groping at the scarred-over spot between his thighs where his cock should've been, like something inside him is stirring that he can't reach. he could open that back up for him. he could peel it all back for him. let him get his fingers in there real good, real deep.

"HEY," and there's a _shove_ against one of his shoulders, Smartass smacking the heel of his hand into him again, disrupting the train of thought. he's turning and staring Smartass dead in the face, unblinking and solid and masklike, because if he says something now it's going to be something he regrets, he's going to lunge at Smartass with big muscle Fucker still there and someone's going to die before they can make good on their private promise to "help" their laughing friend with a problem.

"won't fuck this up," low and quiet, through the gritting of the scattered teeth left in his mouth. when "Idiot" speaks, it's a wet soft pallet slur that leaks fluid all over his consonants. there's a sharp throbbing in his skull underneath the wide open growth on his forehead. pulse, pulse, in time with the flashing lights almost. "got this."

Smartass doesn't believe him. but he yields regardless. what else can he do.  
"good," Smartass grunts, stepping back and turning away, pacing back down the hallway they came from, with Fucker a step and a half behind him, toddling like his legs are confused about their function. like the circuitry up top is slipshod. like his body's been haphazardly glued together by a disinterested child.

they're meant to follow. Giggles sits there for a moment, his laughlike noises down to just little pops of sound under his breath. then he walks, approaching "Idiot" and slipping his body by him, too close to be accidental - "Idiot" grips Giggles by the wrist and yanks him flush into his chest for a moment, mashing his greasy tongue into his mouth, making him squeal with a laughter that hums against his jawbone.  
"later, you `n me, yeah?" into his mouth like it's a secret he's whispering straight into his body, catching his tongue between his remaining front teeth and biting, feeling like he's chewing an acrid slug, jamming his dick up against Giggles' thigh (the fucked up one), "you `n me, i'll help you. i'll help you."  
" _MHMmhmhmh, mhmhmhmhm,_ " like he's drunk. Giggles doesn't know what to do with his hands and they scrabble awkwardly at his own chest like he's seizing, picking violently at the edges of his uniform's leather collar. he sucks Giggles' stupid tongue into his mouth and bites harder at its midpoint, like he's threatening to draw blood, like he's thinking about biting clean through - then gets a hand on Giggles' bare ass and shoves him away from him, forward, towards the corner Smartass and Fucker disappeared behind. Giggles nearly trips over the doctor but rights himself and pads forward.  
"Idiot" watches him go for a while, giving himself a bit before he starts walking too.

later, yeah. time for that later.  
he's got a finger on his face, wiping up the smears of saliva Giggles left there, pushing them into his mouth and sucking them away. swallowing them down.  
there's time. he just needs to be patient is all. there's time now even if it doesn't feel like it.

the doctor still isn't dead when he steps over him to follow. but he will be. there's time for that too.  
there's a puddle of what looks like solid black around him, like tar. he's lost so much blood that he can't move. but his glassy eyes follow him in the dark.


End file.
